


Homes From Scraps

by BleedingHeartCrow



Category: Rusty Lake | Cube Escape (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, References to WWI, canon-typical tone, carpentry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:21:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26352571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BleedingHeartCrow/pseuds/BleedingHeartCrow
Summary: Frank asks Leonard why he came home after the war. Leonard's answers aren't very satisfying.
Relationships: Leonard Vanderboom & Frank Vanderboom
Comments: 3
Kudos: 16
Collections: Press Start VI





	Homes From Scraps

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Andian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andian/gifts).



It took a decade for Leonard Vanderboom's cousins to ask him about the war, and when a question finally came, it was in the typical Vanderbloom style: ugly, direct, but not unkind. The question came in the middle of an afternoon in Leonard's father's workshop, as Leonard laid out projects on the workbench and his cousin Frank sorted through the wood bin for useful scraps. "Leonard," said Frank, with the earnestness of a man who had just had a revelation and needed to share it before it fled. "Why did you come home?"

"Why do you ask?" It was an honest response, said before Leonard had even had a proper chance to consider what he'd been asked. _You sound flippant,_ chided a voice inside his head. _At least look at him when you're speaking to him._ He turned his head, uncertain what he expected to see, but Frank looked like he always did: well-dressed and haggard-eyed, with a few fresh cuts on his chin from an overly close shave. Leonard really did need to show him proper razor technique, one of these mornings. He shouldn't have to keep butchering himself just to feel clean.

"I just thought of it," Frank replied. He turned over the chunk of wood in his hands, then set it down on the workbench; almost absent-mindedly, Leonard moved it alongside a near-identical chunk. Together, they'd make decent walls for a birdhouse. "I've read the old papers. All the stories of villages who'd lost half their men, or more -- you're handsome, Leonard, and you're..." Frank trailed off, with an unconscious glance at Leonard's false leg, the sort of glance that made the phantom ache. "You're not so badly wounded, after all. You could have had a life anywhere. Why did you come back?" 

Because the world outside the Vanderboom house was dirt and blood and poison, Leonard wanted to say, although he knew it was hardly a satisfactory answer. He'd traveled through those half-deserted villages on the way home, imagined himself sleeping in a dead husband's bed next to a grateful widow, but the stench of death clung to even his happiest dreams. An adequate face and a half-intact mind wasn't enough to survive in that world. "It just didn't seem right," he said -- still a weak answer, he thought, but perhaps kinder. "War made me crave something familiar, I suppose. It's... it's not as pleasant as you might imagine, out there."

"Oh, I know," said Frank. "It can't be." His voice was soft, and his eyes were distant, and Leonard had to ask the obvious question.

"Frank, have you considered leaving? You could if you wanted, of course. I know it's difficult to think about, but there's no reason you couldn't. I could show you a little carpentry, if you're worried about earning your keep out there. We'd understand."

Frank just shook his head. "You might understand. I'm not sure Rose would, not if I stayed gone, and... it's Rose who would need to understand. And Mother, and she never would."

Leonard just nodded. That was the heart of it, wasn't it? The living Vanderblooms would always be outvoted by ghosts, and not a single one had ever chosen to leave, except perhaps for Grandfather. And, of course, there was Rose, who spoke for the dead and for her cousins alike -- Rose, as motherless as Frank was fatherless, but with a focused gaze that reminded Leonard too much of his own mother. Leonard though, unhappily and reluctantly, of his parents. If any Vanderboom had ever had a hope of leaving, it was them, and they hadn't. His mother had even known, known every damn thing, and still she hadn't left.

This wasn't a thing to talk about anymore. There was nothing left to be said, and perhaps there never had been. He turned back to the workbench, with its old bloodstains, and tried to focus on the scraps of wood they'd scavenged from his father's bin. Birdhouses were easy, the sort of thing you could slap together from rectangles and pentagons, and he'd have enough for a whole row of them for the front yard, if his predictions were borne out. No need to fire up the motorcycle to go into town.

Frank spoke, again, from directly behind him: as good at sneaking up on you as Uncle Albert had always been. "It's good to get something done, isn't it? Something properly productive."

"It is. Why don't you join me? This won't be too hard -- nailing and painting, mostly. Drilling out a few holes. We'll be done in no time."

"If we have to be." Frank grabbed a hammer and a handful of nails. "These pieces here, do you think? Two like rectangles, two line pentagons? And then a roof and a floor."

"Just what I was thinking," said Leonard. "That one'll be big enough for the pigeons when they arrive. Funny to think that they're still coming home, after all these years. How many generations has it been?"

"It may have been none. How long do pigeons live? I never know with animals. Look at Grandfather's dog."

Leonard often preferred not to think about the dog. There was something mocking about it, its oblivious hardiness, the sense that it would outlast them all and any further implausible generations -- that the Vanderboom name would fall into oblivion before that dog would. "No, I think the pigeons are different," he replied, putting the damn dog out of his mind again. "Different markings. They just teach each other where their home is."

"Then we ought to make sure they've got somewhere pleasant to live," said Frank. He'd test-assembled the birdhouse in front of him -- a shoddy, odd-angled construction, but it seemed to stand and bear the weight of its roof, which was a little miracle. They must have been matched scrap from Father's clock construction. Another great Vanderboom ghost, Leonard thought, but this one was at least going to good use.

"That's a good set," Leonard said. Thank God for geometry, for simple spatial tasks, for mental distraction and order created from chaos. It gave him some tiny hope that all of this might mean something -- a comically weighty concept to get from assembling birdhouses and puttering about with handyman jobs, but you took your comfort where you could get it. "Do you feel confident about the next bit, or should I show you?"

"Show me," said Frank. "It's not a bad idea, the one you had earlier. If I could learn a little carpentry... it might serve me well, eventually. Whatever comes of this."

"It surely won't hurt. Now, then. We're going to line the nail up like so..."


End file.
